best chronologists amongst Jews and Gentiles, who take their 
stand upon the infallible Word of God, are agreed in this, that 
the age of man on earth, since the time of Adam, is limited to 
a period, speaking in round numbers, of six thousand years.* 
But, inasmuch as Scripture speaks also of a future millennial 
period of blessedness, lasting for one thousand years, which is 
termed in Hebrews (iv. 9) “ a rest or keeping of a Sabbath by 
God's people," we find that Christ's kingly rule over His “ pos- 
sessions in the uttermost parts of the earth " (Psalm ii. 8) is 
then said to end. Then will come the end of this age, as St. 
Paul declares, “ when Christ shall have delivered up the king- 
dom to God, even the Father .... that God may be all in 
all" (l Corinthians xv. 24, 28). 
95. Scripture records in many places the creation of a new 
heaven and a new earth, as well as many physical changes on 
the surface of our present globe, which, it may be supposed, 
will resemble the geological changes of the past ; and therefore 
we are warranted in assuming that God will resume His creative 
power at the termination of the period known as the millennium, 
when His rest-day will of necessity come to end, which would 
appear on Biblical authority to have extended through seven 
thousand years ; and if this be a correct estimate respecting 
the duration of one Yom or day, on the principle of analogy 
we may understand the remaining six Yoms to be of the 
same duration. 
9G. If this reasoning be correct, nearly fifty thousand years 
must have passed away since the beginning of the post-tertiaryf 
* Of modern chronologers, Clinton considers the 6,000 years since the 
time of Adam to have expired about A. I). 1862. Usher’s date would bring 
it up to A.D. 1996 ; and the current chronology of the Jews about a century 
later still. It is unnecessary to notice the various hypotheses which those 
who ignore Scripture authority, have propounded for the age of man on 
earth ; whether it be the modest proposal of the late Baron Bunsen, who 
fixes it at B.C. 20,000 ; or the Brahmin chronology, which, according to Sir 
William Jones, allows him an antiquity of 4,300,000 years ; or that of Pro- 
fessor Huxley, who in his speech at Norwich contends that “ the appearance 
of man on the globe should be thrown back to an era immeasurably more 
remote than has ever yet been assigned to it by the boldest speculators ! ” 
The earliest proof of man on earth is unquestionably a tablet now in the Ash- 
molean Museum at Oxford, from the tomb of a priest named. Shera, containing 
the cartouche of the reigning sovereign King Senta, before the name of 
“ Pharaoh ” was known in Egypt, which may be approximately dated as 
B.C. 2,300, or three centuries before the time of Abraham. All beyond this 
is mere speculation. 
t M. U’Orbigny, who together with M. Elio de Beaumont, has mapped out 
the geography of Europe during the Jurassic age with great care, asserts in 
his Prodomc <h I'nleontologic, that not a single species, either animal or 
